Obama inauguration: Gushing favored over priority examination

January 30, 2013

President Barack Obama spent most of his emotional fire in his inauguration speech on matters such as gay rights, same-sex marriage and climate change.

While these are important issues, in many cases decisions regarding them are more apt to be settled in the courts than through legislation.

Meanwhile, the nation's economy is shaky, its debt is large enough to threaten future generations and unemployment totals more than 20 million people.

The president spent almost no time on those matters.

Does this tell us the president's priorities for a second term? If so, it will be a difficult four years for our country.

We can't imagine the nation's economy, jobs situation and debt and something to lift the country regarding those matters didn't belong in Obama's inauguration speech.

Let's put it this way, had President George Bush, who is still the administration's whipping boy for anything wrong with the country, omitted these matters from his speech in these circumstances, he would have been called out by the mainstream media.

He would have been portrayed as a privileged, uncaring leader.

But the mainstream media covering Tuesday's inauguration gave gushing comparisons of Obama to Lincoln and panted on the parade route for a mere wave from the president rather than bothering to ask any questions of him.

We're not asking the television networks and liberal sector of the print media to turn into bloodhounds regarding the covering of President Obama and his administration.

We're just asking them to ask the same pointed questions they would ask either President Bush, or Obama's challenger in the election, Mitt Romney.

Because that's their job. That's all we're asking, whether the issue is inauguration speech priorities, killings at the Libyan embassy, the fiscal cliff or the debt ceiling.

The media failed bigtime regarding the inauguration, preferring the gush angle to an actual examination of the priorities outlined in Obama's speech.